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General Climbing Discussion

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Leading rappeller falls unconscious. What to do? 13-Aug-2014 At 5:06:04 PM Dave_S

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With their weight on the rope, you couldn't get your rappel device onto the rope, so I'm thinking you'd need to do something like the following:

1) Prusik down to the injured climber.
2) Attach yourself securely to their rappel 'biner.
3) Lower yourself a bit further to put your weight on their rappel device.
4) Remove your prusiks.
5) Use their autoblock to control the rappel for both of you.

You could also try to attach your own belay device below the injured climber, where the rope is slack, but that seems like a lot of extra fuss involved in then trying to attach them and shift their weight from their rappel device to yours. However you might need to do that if their injury was that they'd gotten their hair caught in their rappel device.

[Edit: Not only did Clarkie beat me to the punch, but apparently I don't even know how to correctly spell "prusik". I blame Austria]